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Probably because I go on and on about it, I have been getting quite a few emails lately about what children's books we have on our shelf relating to classical mythology (as well as a few e-mails about the toys the kid was playing with during her retelling of the Birth of Pegasus).
First the library. I'm leaving out the obvious books for older kids (Bullfinch, Hamilton, Graves, and the proliferating young adult novels with mythological themes). A couple of these newer books were gifts, but the rest were thrift store finds or ones I came across at John King or some other used book store. I am opening comments on this post in case someone out there has a few mythology books (especially vintage) that are great (and they wouldn't mind sharing).
Beatrice Alexander (Florian, ill) Famous Myths of The Golden Age (California State Dep. of Education, 1969)†
Aliki, The Gods and Goddesses of Olympus (HarperCollins, 1994) (in print)
Heather Amery, Greek Myths for Young Children (Usborne, 1999) (in print)
Lucy Coats (A. Lewis, Ill.), Atticus the Storyteller's 100 Greek Myths (Orion, 2003) (in print)
Sally Pomme Clayton (Virginia Lee, ill) Persephone (Eerdmans, 2009) (in print)
Olivia Coolidge, Greek Myths (Houghton Mifflin, 1949) (in print)*
Ingri d'Aulaire, D'Auliere's Book of Greek Myths (Delacorte, 1992) (in print)
Sara Fanelli, Mythological Monsters of Ancient Greece (Candlewick, 2002)*
Penelope Farmer (ill. Graham McCallum) The Story of Persephone (William Morrow, 1973) (oop)*
Leonard Fisher, Theseus and the Minotaur (Holiday, 1992)
Charles Lamb, The Adventures of Ulysses (1808) (oop)
Penelope Lively, In Search of a Homeland: The Story of the Aeneid (Frances Lincoln, 2007) (in print)
Alice Low (Arvis Stewart, ill) Greek Gods and Heroes, Macmillan, 1985) (oop)
Jean Marzollo, Let's Go Pegasus (Little, Brown, 2006)*
Charles Mikolaycak, Orpheus (Harcourt Brace, 1992) (oop)º
Doris Orgel, Ariadne Awake (Viking, 1994)
Mary Pope Osborne, Favorite Greek Myths (Scholastic, 1989) (in print)*
Neil Phillip, The Adventures Of Odysseus (Scholastic, 1997)
Penelope Proddow (Barbara Cooney, ill) Hermes, Lord of Robbers (Doubleday, 1971) (oop)*
James Reeves (Krystyna Turska, ill) The Trojan Horse (Watts, 1968) (oop)
James Riordan & Christina Balit, The Twelve Labors of Hercules (Millbrook, 1997) (oop)
James Rumford, There's a Monster in the Alphabet (Houghton Mifflin, 2002)
I.M. Richardson, Odysseus and the Great Challenge (Troll Assoc., 1984) (oop)
Lynd Ward, The Silver Pony (Houghton Mifflin, 1973)˚
Helen L. Wilbur (Victor Juhasz, ill) Z is for Zeus, A Greek Mythology Alphabet (Sleeping Bear Press, 2008)
Jane Yolen, Wings (Harcourt, 1997)
*(recommended)
†My mother bought this book from the discard pile at the library branch where I used to ride my bike as a kid; this may be the exact same copy of this book that I loved as a boy.
ºThis book is strange. There are a lot of boobs. Sexy boobs. You may not find it appropriate for kids. May be more useful to read to your husband to get him in the mood.
˚Not really Greek mythology, but it features a Pegasus-like horse.
Also, this company (Bellerophon Books) produces a whole series of wonderful coloring books on classical subjects. I haven't even ordered them all yet, there are so many.
The next post will be about the toys.
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